Their Shifter Academy

by May Dawson

  It seemed too easy. I stared back at him suspiciously. He bit down on his lower lip, ducking his head. He’d looked so relaxed when he was being interrogated by Callum and Arthur, as if he was in control no matter what happened. So why did he look so abashed when I asked him a simple question?

  “You deserve to know,” he said, half to himself.

  “I still don’t understand why you’re doing this,” Lex said, taking a few long strides to come up on the witch’s other side. “Why would a witch go to any trouble for a wolf?”

  “We need each other,” Silas said shortly.

  “Have you tried telling that to your friends?” Callum asked, his eyes flickering deeper into the woods, toward the distant wall we couldn’t see through the trees.

  “They’ve been hard-headed,” Silas answered. He stopped and turned to me. Although it was Lex who had asked the question, he spoke to me. “There are worse things coming to this world than witches and wolves and their old war. If we don’t find a way to bond together first, all the supernatural creatures will die together.”

  “Then why are you witches keeping yourselves a secret?”

  A twisted smile touched his lips. “Don’t we all have orders to follow?”

  I wanted to ask him more questions, but he glanced at his watch again. “Three minutes. I need you, Maddie.”

  Callum rested his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ve got your back.”

  I touched his hand with mine, taking comfort from my adopted big-brother’s touch. He had always looked out for me. No wolf knew magic better than he did. If he trusted Silas for this spell, then I did too. I turned to face Silas.

  A sudden, hard breeze shook the trees around us, rattling the leaves violently.

  “Just imagine yourself shifting,” Silas said, and he grabbed my hands. “I can help you with the rest.”

  When he touched me, the world faded away.

  It was just Silas and me.

  His bright eyes met mine evenly as the forest went very quiet. The others were gone, and there was no sound anymore of crickets and frogs and the rush of wind. I should’ve been scared.

  Instead, I stared back at him as silver lightning crackled between our palms. His gray eyes seemed to reflect that same silver light, eerie and magnetic. His eyes widened. “You’re as strong as they said.”

  That was hard to process. “Who the hell are they?”

  Around us, dark tendrils of smoke seemed to drift, thick as ropes that hung in the air, winding between the trees, swaying faintly even though the breeze had gone.

  “We need to focus,” he said, squeezing my hands. “Show me what it’s like to shift so we can break the spell. I haven’t been able to find my way into their magic…”

  His eyes were bright silver now, as bright as moonlight.

  I tried to think of what it felt like. I was new to shifting, and thinking of it still brought a shiver of dread and a thrill of anticipation all at once.

  Because first, there was so much pain. It felt like the flu coming on all at once at first; muscles aching, skin feverish-hot, head aching. My stomach would tighten and twist like I was going to throw up. Then the change itself came on suddenly: skin bursting open to reveal claws, teeth that felt like they were shattering, muscles bursting and changing as bones re-arranged themselves. As I remembered the agony the first time I shifted, I could imagine Silas at the edge of the forest, watching me with those eyes that shone in the darkness.

  Then the pain was gone, overwhelmed by the adrenaline spike.

  The world would be bright and fresh and beautiful as I padded on my paws across the forest floor.

  “Good,” Silas said. He squeezed my hands in his, and I realized the ribbons of smoke had looped around me now, floating inches away from my skin. Usually, if I’d imagined myself shifting like that, I would have begun to turn. The spell had kept me from shifting, and the magic had been drawn to me.

  “Creepy,” I muttered.

  Silas murmured in Latin, speaking the words of a spell I didn’t know, as he gathered up the strands of magic in his hands. They bucked wildly, pulling back against him, and his voice grew louder, more insistent, as he drew them toward him. Silver sparks slid away from his palms as he yanked the magic up, gathering it into a spool.

  I began to gather it with him, pulling it with him out of the air and winding it around my fingers. It was immaterial, but when I imagined myself capturing it, it turned solid in my hands, a narrow ribbon of dark magic that I could fold up. Silas looked at me with surprise written across his face, and delight.

  In the distance, witches screamed. The magic suddenly snapped. The ribbons that were still floating loose broke free and drifted up into the trees, falling to pieces like smoke in the wind. The magic in my hands crumpled through my fingers.

  “Thank you for showing me your world,” Silas said. “I couldn’t have done this without you and your magic.”

  “Thanks for helping us stop an attack from the covens?” I asked. “Although I still have questions about why one witch came here to help us stop them.”

  His lips quirked ruefully. “I’m not exactly alone. But I overestimated myself. And apparently, I underestimated you. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” I said.

  “It should,” he promised me.

  “You said I showed you my world,” I said, my head racing. “Well, show me yours.”

  He shook his head. I thought he was going to tell me no, but a rueful smile curved his lips as he took my hands in his again. His fingers were warm and strong, and he held me like we were dancing.

  “I shouldn’t do this,” he said, “but what does it matter now?”

  Before I could ask what he meant, I was in the corner of his memory, the way he had lurked in the shadows of mine.

  He was standing on the lawn in front of a big stone school, surrounded by a dozen other young witches. They all wore the same uniforms of dark, fitted jackets and trousers, with something gripped in their hands. I squinted, sure my imagination was deceiving me.

  Wands. They all carried wands. I’d never seen one of the witches in our world with a wand.

  “Ready?” One of them called, glancing over his shoulder at the others. “Here it comes.”

  The sky seemed to crack open, a dark line that zig-zagged its way to Earth. I could barely take my eyes away from it, but when I dared to look away, I found Silas in the crowd. His eyes glowed that bright silver again, and his jaw was set. But the lines of tension around his eyes and the way he leaned forward, resolute, his hands shaking, made me think that he was terrified.

  “Now,” the leader called, and he ran forward toward the crack in the universe as it slammed into the earth. The ground shook under our feet. A monster flew out of the rip, a winged thing with seven heads that whipped back and forth.

  No matter how scared Silas was, he ran forward to meet it.

  Then the scene was gone. It was just Silas in front of me, still holding my hands.

  “Help us, Maddie Northsea,” he said. “We’ll always be here when you need us, but we need you too.”

  “What was that?” I asked. “What you showed me?”

  “My school. And a rip in the dimension.”

  “A rip?”

  “The walls between the worlds are wearing thin,” he said.

  “So you’re not from around here?”

  He grinned in response.

  “I’ll tell you everything when we meet again. Sooner or later.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips across my forehead. His lips were warm and soft.

  I took a quick step back, releasing his hands as I yanked away. I might not have minded Silas kissing me, but I hadn’t expected that.

  “No,” I said. “You told me you’d answer my questions.”

  He winked at me. “Did I say it would be today? My mistake.”

  “Silas—”

  The sound of the wind and the crickets rose around
us again. Silas was gone. But I was surrounded by Piper and her men and Jensen and Lex once again. They all stared around in confusion.

  “Where’d he go?” Lex demanded impatiently.

  Silas sat on the top of the broken wall. “Sorry. You aren’t going to like this part.”

  Callum ran toward him, beginning to incant, as Silas went on.

  “When I speak the last word of this spell, you’ll all go your separate ways. You’ll wake in the woods with no memory of how you found yourself there. You won’t remember the witch’s attack, or this battle, or me. Instead, your brain will deduce some reason why you were out here.”

  The ground rolled up under our feet.

  Lex reached out to steady me, and I caught his forearm in my hand, feeling the ground shift, as I reached for a tree limb to hang onto. I clung desperately to him and the gritty bark under my straining fingertips.

  The ground seemed to tilt.

  The world fell away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lex and I stood at the edge of the woods. The breeze fluttered the branches above, which formed a lacy canopy through which the stars shone above us. I didn’t remember coming out here. He frowned back at me, his brow furrowed above his eyes like he didn’t remember either.

  Then, it seemed like understanding dawned on his face. He smiled like there was nothing strange at all.

  “Well, Maddie,” he said, and there was a teasing note in his voice. “What do you think of the academy?”

  “I don’t think it’s the school I want to go to,” I muttered, thinking of a school that stood at the edge of the universe, where magic was good and the universe needed to be defended. Some daydream that was. I didn’t even know where it was, except that it wasn’t on this world.

  “Oh,” he said, and his lips parted in a smile. “Then I can do this.”

  Lex leaned toward me, tilting his head to one side. His dark lashes fluttered over his eyes again. I closed my eyes, just a second before he brushed his lips against mine.

  This was why we’d come out here. Now I remembered: Lex and I had slipped away from the prospective student dinner. I couldn’t believe I’d only met him this morning. The connection between us felt like something older, more familiar.

  For a second, I was very still. He had seemed so confident, and I didn’t know how to kiss anyone.

  Then my lips parted against his.

  He stepped in toward me even closer. His hands rested lightly on my hips. I slid my palms up his forearms, feeling the corded muscle even through the stiffness of his school jacket.

  He glanced down the jacket, and then he slipped it off, folding it neatly in two before he slung it over a nearby branch. He shook his head at himself, as if this wasn’t like him.

  But if it wasn’t like him, why was he such an expert kisser?

  “You’re too good for this school,” he said, and his hands slid around my hips again. “And you’re definitely too good for me.”

  “You seem like a nice guy to me,” I said, and my voice came out husky, different than I expected it to sound.

  “I’m not a nice guy at all,” he said. “Maybe one of the good guys, sometimes. But not a particularly nice guy.”

  I didn’t think he knew what he was, for all his confidence. “Shut up and kiss me.”

  His grin was a quick flash, like sunshine breaking through the clouds.

  When he looked at me like that, I knew I was done for.

  I had a hopeless crush on this guy who would be one of my cadre next year, who was supposed to be off-limits.

  Then his lips were on mine, and I didn’t care one bit at all about anyone’s rules.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Late that night, I dared to take my hand off the wheel to grab my monster cup of Nerd-infused slushie from a fast food stop. Piper didn’t even comment for once. She usually liked to drive when we were in her car, but when I’d offered at our stop, she had handed me the keys without an argument.

  “Are you all right?” I asked her.

  She nodded, turning her small smile on me. “Are you?”

  “It was a day.” My shoulders and legs were aching and exhausted, even though I hadn’t done anything to work up a sweat. I didn’t know why we were both so tired.

  But it seemed like the guys were hovering around her. I frowned; they hadn’t joined us any other trips to visit colleges. Piper and I had enjoyed some sisterly bonding time, which had been increasingly rare lately as our schedules took us in two different directions. She had evil witches to kill and I had A.P. exams to slay, apparently. But this time was different. Either because they knew the shifter academy was my destiny, or because they couldn’t bear to let my sister out of their sight for long… Why were they suddenly even more protective than usual?

  “Piper,” I asked abruptly. “Are you pregnant?”

  Her lips quirked to one side, but she didn’t answer.

  “Well?” I demanded, but I already knew the answer.

  “I was going to tell you later,” she said. “I wanted to do something fun. Give you a My aunt kicks ass onesie or something.”

  “Do they make those?” I demanded, even though it was not the most pressing thing on my mind. “Piper! You’re pregnant!”

  “I’m pregnant.” She couldn’t help but grin when she said the words.

  Despite how much some people thought it was a born shifter’s job to have all the babies, it had taken Piper a while to be ready to have children. And then, once she was, she had been trying for a year or so without luck. Maybe this is no world to make a baby in and that’s why, I’d heard her snap to Kai in frustration one day as the two of them were in the kitchen. He’d wrapped his arms around her, promising that they’d turn the world into a safe place for their babies, and she’d rested her head on his shoulder. I’d been on the hunt for a snack, but I’d silently retraced my steps, leaving them in privacy.

  When Piper grinned like she was giddy about this baby, it made me giddy too.

  “How far along are you?”

  “I’m like two days past being able to test,” she told me. “I promise, I would not leave my baby sister out of the loop for long. Who knows if it will even stick.”

  I settled my drink into my cup holder so I could reach out and grab her hand. She squeezed my hand back, giving me a teasing look before she said, “Okay, ten-and-two please before we crash.”

  I laughed as I put my hands back on the steering wheel. “You drive like a bat out of hell.”

  “I’ve got combat-driver training,” she said. “Which, by the way, is still on the syllabus at the academy.”

  “Yes.” I did a mock victory pump of my fist in the air. It did seem fun; whatever trouble there might be at the academy, I thought it was worth it.

  “You know what’s not on the syllabus,” she began mischievously, giving me a look I knew all too well. “What happened with you and Lex?”

  “He kissed me,” I confessed, and my own giddiness rushed over me again.

  “After all his talk about the strict hierarchy?” Her lips quirked up.

  There’d been such instant chemistry between us. I wanted to ask her if I thought he and I were fated.

  “I guess I’m pretty cute,” I said lightly.

  “I guess you are,” she said. “As well as brilliant and badass.”

  “Not everyone was quite so won over.”

  “No, I imagine not,” she said. “A lot of people never wanted girls at the academy.”

  “Why?”

  She shook her head, her lips tightening. “You know how ridiculous the packs are.”

  “Wait,” I said, trying to do the math. I counted on my fingers, lifting them off the steering wheel. “If I go to the academy, then I won’t be around when you have the baby, will I?”

  “You’ll come home and see the baby,” she said. “It’ll be all right.”

  “I want to be there for you.”

  Piper rested her hand on my leg. “Girl, it doesn’t matter whe
re you go. You and I are always there for each other.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to go to the academy to begin with.”

  “I don’t like the thought of you getting hurt,” she said. “I’d rather keep you with me forever. But that’s my selfish side. I don’t want you to give up any of your dreams for me.”

  “You think I’m going to get hurt?” By going to the academy, or by working the job that came after—the one that would have me chasing down covens and fighting in a secret war?

  “Yes,” she said. “I think you’re going to break your heart—and probably some bones—if you go down this road. But I think it’ll be worth it.”

  “You think Lex would break my heart?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  He didn’t have a cell phone—they weren’t allowed on campus, even if they’d worked—but I had given him my address to write me. I figured if a man actually sat down and wrote a letter, it was a pretty sure sign he had a thing for you.

  She flashed me a sly look. “You’re more worried about breaking your heart than breaking bones?”

  “Much,” I said. I’d trained with the men of her pack since I was little. No matter how careful they tried to be with me, I’d been bruised and bloodied from time-to-time by accident, and I’d seen how much more roughly they trained. I knew that kind of thing was waiting for me at the academy: grappling with sweaty, disgusting guys; taking hits that stole the breath from my lungs; getting hit in the face and spitting out my own blood. I wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea, but I wasn’t scared, either.

  Plus I’d get the chance to punch some other people in the face. Jensen McCauley’s handsome, smirking face came to mind.

  “Is Lex going to come visit?” she asked me.

  “Would that be okay?”

  “Like I said,” she shrugged, “make your own mistakes.”

  I frowned, cocking my head to one side. I felt like she’d said that before, but I didn’t remember when. “When did you say that?”

  “I say it all the time,” she said airily.

  Maybe. Her words did give me a sense of déjà vu, like I’d lived through this moment before. But until recently, Piper had been in protective-and-bossy mode. Now that I was almost eighteen, she must be letting go.